How did the Maharastri language develop into Marathi?

The Marathi language is a direct descendant of the Maharashtri Prakrit, an ancient Indo-Aryan language native to the region of Maharashtra in western India.12

The evolution from Maharashtri to modern Marathi involved significant linguistic shifts characteristic of the transition from Middle to New Indo-Aryan languages. As the Prakrit languages evolved, they underwent changes in phonology and morphology that were often categorized by grammarians as Apabhramsha (meaning "deviance" or "fall"). These changes included a move away from the synthetic, inflection-heavy nature of older languages toward a more analytical structure.34

Like other New Indo-Aryan languages, Marathi eventually lost much of its original inflectional system for indicating case. Instead, it adopted the use of postpositions—words that function like prepositions but follow the noun—combined with an oblique case to serve grammatical functions. By approximately 1000 CE, this linguistic development had matured sufficiently to support the emergence of a distinct Marathi literary tradition, which flourished through the influence of the Mahanubhava and Varakari Panth sects.156